Morphological characterization of black pepper (Piper nigrum L) accessions from Kerala

Fifty accessions of black pepper maintained at the National Active Germplasm Site of ICAR-IISR, Kozhikode, Kerala were characterized to assess variability among the accessions for qualitative and quantitative characters. Majority of the accessions had dimorphic branching habit, light purple shoot tip colour, many runner shoots, weak holding capacity, few adventitious roots, horizontal lateral branching habit, ovate leaf lamina, round leaf base shape and round fruit shape. Five accessions produced more than 1.5 kg dry pepper. Clustering based on qualitative characters grouped the accessions into 4 clusters. Multivariate hierarchial cluster analysis based on quantitative traits grouped the accessions into five major clusters. Accession IC598883 remained as a single cluster with very high yield and tall vine. This accession was proposed to be used for further evaluation to release as a commercial variety.